


Broken

by Deannie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-08
Updated: 2006-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-13 03:38:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/819524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's research Dean does that Sam will never know about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken

**Broken**  


Ever since Jess died, Dean's taken to running a web search that he never tells Sam about: "mother, fire, infant." He runs it a couple of times a month, in the dead of night while Sam tosses and turns and dreams of flames.  


He always gets at least one hit--fires happen every day, after all--and his blood chills until he gets to the part where the baby died as well. He should feel guilty about that, he knows, but he thinks of his brother and Lucas and Michael... and he realizes that it's better to die ignorant than to live broken. It's better if you don't know about what's out there. It's better to have a normal life, a normal death, a normal fire, because he knows from experience just what those darker flames do to a kid.... It's not much, but it gets him through the "normal" fires--the ones he thinks of as the good ones.  


The bad ones are more difficult. A mother dies in an unexplained fire; a child is left without a mommy, a husband without a wife.... Dean tries not to remember the flames and the silence when those ones come up. He tries not to wonder whether Dad is in some other crappy motel room, running the same search.  


It's hopeless, of course, because he knows Dad knows. He knows that Dad feels the same urge he does; the urge to run to whatever small town just lost a neighborhood soccer mom, to get there before the smoke settles, to search for clues and try to find that thing before it kills again.  


He also knows that there's a difference between him and Dad. _He_ wants to kill it because it will only kill again--that's almost more important than the fact that it broke his family. Dad wants it dead because it took his life. Dean remembers his happy father, before the flames, and as much as he loves the hunter he's got now, he knows that something's dead there. And if you're already dead inside, what does it matter if your body goes as well?  


That scares Dean more than just about anything--more than dying himself. He needs that little bit of his dad that's still alive. He's not sure what he'd do if he lost that, too.  


There're no bad ones tonight, but he knows there will be again, soon. And if not that, then something else that needs to be stopped. Something that'll give some other kid a glimpse of evil that he's just not ready for--someone like Sam or Michael or Lucas.... Sometimes, in the night, he remembers that he was one of those kids, too. He knows he should wonder why he never adds himself to the list, but he doesn't.  


He just sits in the darkness until he hears Sam call out for Jess in his sleep, and then he knows it's time to stop wondering. In tight, controlled movements, Dean closes the laptop and gets into bed and feigns sleep when Sam bolts up from his nightmare, screaming her name.  


Dean never feels guilty about this subterfuge, either--he doesn't even think he should. He just listens as Sam recovers; sometimes getting out of bed for something to drink or a splash of water on his face; sometimes just settling back with a sad sigh. They remind him of his childhood, these post-nightmare rituals, and he shudders when he finds them perversely comforting.  


That's something else Dean sees that other people don't--not even the rest of his family. Sam and Dad are too alike. They both have dead spots, and dead spots are dangerous things. They spread sometimes, killing everything around them until you're left with one tiny little bit of life in a dead man's eyes. But Sam's dead spot is small enough to be salvaged. Maybe. Most of him is still alive, and Dean needs to keep it that way. So he snores a little, shifts in his sheets, and lets Sam shake it off.  


He never lets Sam know he sees the pain, and he never tells Sam about the web search. He never lets his brother know because he's afraid that he might have it backwards after all....  


It might just be better to live ignorant than to die broken.  


* * * * * * *  
The End  


FANDOM: Supernatural  
RATING: G  
ORIENTATION: Gen 


End file.
